Murder at the National Gallery Read Online Free PDF Page A

class.
    The Italian cultural attaché and the senior curator were a study in opposites: Mason looked every bit the professor, or gallery curator. His double-breasted navy blazer was sculpted to his tall, slender frame. His shirt was a blue button-down model, his tie a muted blue paisley. He wore gray slacks and brown walking shoes with thick crepe soles. Mason held to what had become a hopelessly old-fashioned belief that one should dress nicely when traveling. His only fear of flying was that he would be seated next to someone wearing a tank top, sandals, and a baseball cap worn backwards, and who wanted to talk.
    Giliberti, also thin, was considerably shorter. His suit was silver gray; hundreds of tiny metallic threads woven into the cloth shimmered in the overhead lights. The collar of his white shirt rose unnaturally high at the back of his neck. His tie was a palette of reds, greens, and yellows, his shoes highly polished black loafers with paper-thin soles. The cultural attaché’s swarthy face had a chiseled quality, the nose large and prominent, some acne pitting scarring his cheeks. His hair was coal-black, wavy, and wet.
    Their traveling styles were different, too. Mason sat in his preferred window seat in first class, where he was less likely to be called upon to chat. The more gregarious Giliberti, a familiar face on Alitalia, was especially friendly this night with one of the flight attendants, engaging her in long, animated conversations. Mason contented himself with reading magazines and reports he’d carried aboard in a well-worn expandable brown-leather briefcase. Giliberti watched the movie, a current American comedy with Italian subtitles, its racy scenes deleted in order not to offend the flying public.
    Mussolini would have been proud, Mason thought, as the aircraft pulled up to the gate precisely at its scheduled arrival time at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport, on the coast, fifteen miles east of the city. With Giliberti leading the way, they weresped through Customs and into a waiting government Mercedes that took them to the Valadier Hotel in the heart of the Eternal City. The Valadier, once a brothel, was Luther Mason’s place of choice when in Rome. Its transformation into a luxurious hotel, with the largest bathrooms in the city, was inherently appealing. But it was its location that he especially enjoyed. Situated just below Pincio Hill, the Valadier was only a short walk to the splendors of Villa Borghese’s sumptuous grounds and esteemed museums, as well as the popular Piazza del Popolo.
    “What time is our meeting?” Mason asked as he prepared to leave the Mercedes.
    “Two hours,” replied Giliberti. “I’ll pick you up at ten-thirty.”
    Mason followed the bellman and his luggage into the lobby gleaming with marble, polished brass, expanses of mahogany, and overflowing arrangements of fresh flowers. He was shown to the room he always tried to reserve, one of three with a terrace overlooking the Borghese gardens. He slowly and carefully unpacked, neatly arranging socks, underwear, and shirts in dresser drawers and positioning his hang-up clothing in the large closet so that the garments were equidistant from each other.
    After a quick shower, he opened the door to allow room service to deliver coffee and fresh pastries. Ninety minutes later he joined Giliberti in the waiting car.
MINISTERO DEL CULTURA
    Alberto Betti was as corpulent as Carlo Giliberti was thin. Perhaps
round
was a better adjective to describe the minister of culture, whose office in the seventeenth-century Palazzo di Montecitorio was proportionally large to accommodate him, or so it seemed. Minister of Circles, Luther Mason thought, for Betti appeared to be constructed of a series of them, the type drawn by young children on stick figures. There was a circle for his head, almost perfect, its upper curved pate disturbed by strands of thinning black hair. A larger circle defined his torsoand was covered by a drab,